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Collection online

kylix

Object type

Museum number

1843,1103.9

Description

Pottery: red-figured kylix. Outline of hair incised.Interior: Within a thin red circle, dancing girl and fluteplayer. A youth (wreathed, mantle on left shoulder, phorbeia over mouth) steps in time to right, playing flutes; before him dances a girl with castanets, in short close-fitting bordered chiton of archaic form, a nebris fastened to left shoulder, earrings, and a saccos; she looks round to left; her chiton is not indicated above the waist.Exterior: (a) Heracles slaying Busiris. Beside an altar (with top in form of Ionic capital) Busiris falls backward to right, his left leg bent under him, both arms thrown upward, blood streaming from two wounds in jaw and crown: Heracles grasps him by the throat, and swings his club back to deal him a final stroke: he is bearded, and wears lionskin tied, short chiton, and quiver hanging at waist from his right shoulder. On either side two Egyptian priests run away at full speed, looking back; the foremost on left holds a sacrificial knife, and has just let fall the sacrificial basket: his companion wears a phorbeia, and has a flute case (sybene) hanging from his left shoulder. The foremost on right has just dropped a chelys, with plectrum attached: his companion carries a trefoil oinochoe. All the Egyptians have shaven heads, with a patch of hair, indicated by brown dots, left over the ear; in the case of the two on left, the brown dots extend all over the head; the one with oinochoe has the cheek dotted. They have long crania, thick lips, snub nose and wrinkled forehead and cheeks: and wear a short under-tied chiton, of which the finer folds are only indicated above the girdle. The four priests wear wreaths. (b) Symposion, with triclinium. On the left couch is a man wreathed, with himation around legs, his right arm supporting his head thrown back, his left hanging at side, singing to the music of a flute-playing girl (long chiton, himation, saccos, earrings) who stands beside foot of couch. Beside his left hand is his kylix, which he has laid on the ground. On the central couch is a man partly bald, with wrinkled forehead (himation round legs, folded cloth tied round head), holding out his kylix to be filled by a wreathed boy who holds an oinochoe in right hand. The third couch, on right, is at right angles to the others, so that the figure on it has his back turned; he rests his left elbow on a striped bolster, and raises a kylix to his lips; the upper part of his head and parts of his left arm and back are wanting, but he seems to be an ephebos wreathed.